Vital Life Services, a non-profit established in Oakland 24 years ago to assist low-income and homeless residents dealing with HIV/AIDS and related problems, is facing a do-or-die scenario, executive director Peggy Bush says.

Despite a souring economy, more Americans say they are giving to their churches and making other charitable contributions despite record job losses and dwindling saving accounts, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup poll.

Vital Life Services, a non-profit established in Oakland 24 years ago to assist low-income and homeless residents dealing with HIV/AIDS and related problems, is facing a do-or-die scenario, executive director Peggy Bush says.

The financial crisis in the auto industry has been more devastating for African Americans than any other community, threatening a half-century's economic gains by the black middle class. From blacks who left behind subsistence jobs in the South for high-paying factory jobs in the North during the Great Migration, to entrepreneurs who translated hard work and the gift of selling into their own businesses they're all getting hammered.

The success of the UAW is credited by many historians as key to the growth of the U.S. middle class. After the UAW got a foothold, it won wages, job security, health care and job-safety rules that became basic working conditions for industrial work. But recent debate about bailout loans exposed that many Americans are skeptical of the UAW, seeing members as overpaid, underworked and to blame for much of the industry's decline. From his home in Clio, Mich., Arthur Lowell read newspaper coverage of the recent bailout debates every night with a different perspective. In the winter of 1936-37, he spent several weeks inside a cold General Motors plant, fighting for respect.